Ontario premier faces a rowdy crowd in Ottawa-area town hall

More than 300 people packed into an auditorium in Ottawa Thursday evening to give Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne an earful during a rowdy town hall meeting.

The event occurred with an election on the horizon and on the same day that the premier announced that Pat Sorbara will not be a part of the Ontario Liberals’ 2018 campaign.

“Pat Sorbara will not be joining the campaign team,” Wynne said in a statement Thursday evening. “However, I will continue to count upon her personal friendship.”

Sorbara, who was also Wynne’s deputy chief of staff, was acquitted along with local Liberal fundraiser Gerry Lougheed of Election Act bribery charges in October, after a Sudbury, Ont., judge found no jury would convict them.

After issuing the statement, Wynne headed to Ottawa to participate in her third town hall meeting in recent weeks and for 90 minutes the premier fielded questions on elder abuse, the legalization of marijuana and the increase in the minimum wage.

The question period was moderated by Cherlyn Jensen, president of Algonquin College and the first subject of the evening was the provincewide faculty strike that saw 500,000 college students out of class for five weeks.

Wynne expressed regret for students who were caught up in the middle of negotiations.

“I believe in the collective bargaining process,” said Wynne, but she admitted that it was a learning experience for “how we can do this differently.

Several audience members expressed concern about the federal government’s move to legalize marijuana.

“It is a big shift,” Wynne said, but emphasized that the safety of youth is a priority.

“At the heart of it is the attempt to make it safer,” said Wynne of the marijuana legislation. “If we can undercut the black market, if we can put in place some of the controls that are in place around alcohol for example. And there’s more education, because I think that is a big key. We have not done a systematic education of people about what is in the marijuana that’s available today and how it is safely used.”

Bob Farmer, from the Canadian Federation of Pensioners, asked if pensioners will be protected.

“My priority and focus would be to make sure that people who have saved all their lives and paid into a pension plan are treated fairly,” Wynne said.

A larger challenge Wynne says is the “many, many people who don’t have a pension at all.”

The subject of elder abuse came up more than once.

One man told a story of losing both of his parents in hospital due to neglect.

“Elder abuse…When will it stop and when will the Ministry release an honest survey of the nursing homes and abuse in this province?” asked Shirley Mosley.

“There is not a person in this room or in the lobby who doesn’t believe that we need to treat, in our society, elderly, vulnerable people with respect, with gentleness,” Wynne responded.

“We have increased vigilance. We have increased the tools that the ministry and the healthcare system have to monitor what goes on in our long-term care and retirement homes,” said Wynne.

As the evening went on, the crowd grew more raucous. One man began to ask a question in French someone in the crowd shouted, “English!”

At another point a young man compared Wynne’s minimum wage increase as “akin to socialism, which destroyed Russia under the Soviet Union.”

“There are lots of strong feelings about these subjects. That’s why I’m here. Because we have strong feelings about the things that we believe in. I need to hear those and I need to understand the issues,” she responded.

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This story was produced in collaboration with Centretown News and Carleton University.